Waking up with your smartphone: What do you check first?

Thirty-five percent of smartphone users check their phones while they’re still in bed, according to a study from the Ericsson ConsumerLab. Half check them some time in the morning. There were 700 million smartphones in use when the study came out in 2011. Now there are more than a billion.

Whether you go from snooze to screen or snooze to shower to breakfast to screen, chances are good that if you use a smartphone, it’s found a home somewhere in your morning routine.

What the study didn’t ask — and no study has since, as far as I can tell — is what people checking their phones in the morning check first. Email? Facebook? The news? It may seem insignificant, but it’s not. How we behave early in the morning can set the tone for the rest of the day. Facebook is usually fun, but email can put a worry in your head in seconds. Do you hear the world’s demands while your cheek’s still on the pillow, or wait ’til after breakfast?

I’m thinking on the implications of that this week, and would love your input. Use a smartphone? Answer the polls in this post and tell me more about how you wake up with your smartphone …